Theses and Dissertations Collection

“The Fact and Curl of It [Studies]” is an experimental collection of creative nonfiction. The project demonstrates fractured unity through the juxtaposition of linked essays and studies, pieces at once discrete in form and cohesive in their errand: to articulate that which can be known implicitly—about the body, about one’s self—via annotation of close territory. Throughout the manuscript, the unnamed female narrator slips between pronomial selves—you/I/we. Her subjects likewise slip, shifting toward and away from clear identification (or implication) beyond the first three letters of the alphabet: A, B, C. Blending straight narrative, blunt self-assessment, high lyricism, and classical essaying with episodes of antiphonic call-and-response, “The Fact and Curl of It [Studies]” interrogates pattern, bight, and boundary. The collection seeks radical authenticity without succumbing to apology—and ends with inhabitation of the body, utterly, with the seed of knowing as a single circuit, closed.